Elwen the Conquered

“Where are they?” Varian demanded, filled with rage. Just trying to kill him was one thing, he was fine with just killing anyone they sent after him. But trying to take Elwen from him? He could not stand it.

“I don't know! I just get a file! I don't know anything else!” Silvia screamed as he loomed over her. His hand tightly clutched a dagger he didn't even realize he had drawn.

“Then where is the guild?” If she couldn't direct him to the would-be thieves, then he would just have to go to someone who could. Surely someone at the guild would be able to tell him who and where their clients are.

“I don't know!” Varian was getting tired of her not giving him answers. “They come to me! I haven't been to their headquarters?”

“Who?”

“It's a couple different men.” Silvia explained, “But recently it's just been a lizardman. He calls himself Darkscale, but I don't think that's his real name. I haven't seen either of the other two in a while.”

“How do I find him?” A lizardman? He hasn't seen any, but he knew that they existed. It might make him easier to find.

“I don't know. They always come to me.” Varian did not like her answer. “B-but he's coming in a few days! He comes every month to give new instructions and information. Our meeting is on the night of the new moon!”

“And where is this meeting?” The new moon... That was tomorrow, wasn't it? He didn't track the cycle of the moon closely, but he supposed that it was a good way of keeping track of time without any equipment. It certainly wasn't as precise as a clock, but then again that sort of precision wasn't needed. They just needed to know the day.

“It's in the forest, just north of town! There's a big boulder in a small clearing, that's the spot we're supposed to meet!” Silvia hurriedly answered.

“And is he the only one that will be coming or will he bring friends?”

“I'm... not sure,” Silvia bit her lip, “He usually comes alone, but sometimes there is another man. I don't know him.”

“I see.” Varian said as he stood up and began walking out of the room. “I will wait for your contact. If your information is correct, I'll let you go. If not...”

“Wait!” Silvia yelled as he finished. He stopped, just before the door, turning to listen to her. “You want to destroy the guild, right?”

His primary goal was to eliminate however commissioned them, but the Assassin's Guild needed to be dealt with too. He nodded.

“Take me with you! I can help!”

“Why should I?” Varian didn't trust her at all. She may have been somewhat cooperative, but it wasn't enough for him to believe that she wouldn't try to stab him in the back,

“I can help you get to the guild! Darkscale won't come if I'm not at the meeting spot. You need me to get to him!” Silvia responded, desperate to go with him.

“And why would you want to help me?” She had told him about her contract, and he could see why she would want to help him destroy the guild, if it helped her out of her contract. But still, he couldn't help but feel like this was a way to get him to lower his guard so she could kill him. Without knowing everything about her contract, he couldn't be sure. And he also couldn't just ask her either, she could have a condition where she wasn't allowed to tell him. Or the entire thing could be made up.

“I want to be free!” Silvia answered, “I want to get out of the contract! I never wanted to do this, I never wanted to be an assassin! They forced me to!”

Her answer was certainly impassioned, and he couldn't find any hints of lies. And it would be beneficial to have her assistance, it would be a lot easier to trap her contact with her help. But still, he couldn't trust her, not completely.

“I understand. But still, I can't trust you, and nothing you can do will change that. So, I will give you a choice. Join me, and I will make you my slave, temporarily, and free you once our business is concluded, or stay here until I am done.” Varian made his offer. Making her his slave would prevent her from betraying him, and it was the only way that he could trust her not to stab him in the back. Luckily, he picked up the ability to do this when he unlocked his [Slavemaster] system, otherwise he wouldn't be able to even offer it.

Silvia looked conflicted. He understood why, from the sound of it, her contract was like slavery, and he was just offering her the same. He took her silence as his answer and turned to the door. He hadn't planned on getting her help, so he was really just back to where he was originally, except now he knew what he was after. Still, he was a little disappointing, she could have made things a lot easier for him.

“I'll do it!” She called from behind him. He turned around once again, seeing only determination in her eye. “Take me with you.”

He couldn't help but grin. Suddenly, his chances of success shot up.

Elwen placed the last crystal in the box Cladion had given her. Cladion was her magic instructor, although he insisted that he was more of an enchanter than a mage. He was one of only a couple magic users at the fort, being in charge of all of the magical device arrays that the company operated, as he explained to her. The other mages operated other bits of specialized equipment.

When she asked what he meant by 'magic device array,' he explained that they were a bunch of smaller magic devices that combined to create one big effect. He gave the example of the fort's defense field, which was an array of nearly a hundred devices that would create a giant dome over the fort if it was ever attacked. She didn't even know that the fort had something like that, and she was really surprised to learn that it was actually created solely by him, it was actually one of the reasons that the company hired him. He specialized in magic device arrays, and the company wanted to replace a large scale enchantment that they used to use that was expensive to maintain and difficult to use.

They had mostly focused on the basics of magic, primarily magic control as she didn't have any difficulty connecting with mana, which Cladion was apparently expecting.

“Are you really a beginner?” He had asked her after she effortlessly broke a magic seal that he drew on a piece of paper, which he had given her as a sort of trial to 'unlock' her connection to mana.

“Yes, I only started using magic a few months ago...” Really, this wasn't that difficult, all that she did was poke the mana and the seal and push it a little bit of mana into it, just like he told her. The only thing that made it a little difficult was not putting in too much, the seal seemed to by trying to suck the mana out of her.

After that, he gave her a little magic crystal and told her to put as much mana as she could into it. It reminded her a lot of her experiments with putting mana in stones, which helped her a lot with getting her mana to flow into the crystal. Only a few seconds after she got her mana to start moving into the crystal, frantically took the crystal away from her. The crystal felt a little hot, but she wasn't sure why he stopped her.

“Ok, do the same thing with that one, but do it with this one,” he told her, handing her a much larger crystal with a series of carvings in it and a little metal cup on one end. “And don't do it too quickly, only put in a little at a time. Once you're done, pull out all the mana and do it again.”

She did as he asked, pushing in a little bit of mana at a time. It was a lot like her spell book, taking a lot more mana that the stones did, although it didn't seem like the crystal was as much of a black hole of mana like the book, and she felt like she was done only a minute or so into filling it. It became faster and easier after she filled it up and drained it all the way a couple times, but Cladion kept stopping her and telling her to slow down.

“You have a good connection with your mana, and you certainly won't have any problems in the near future with quantity, but you need to work on your control. Those crystals should be fine if you overload it, but most of the time overloading your magic will be disastrous.” Elwen nodded at his words, feeling guilty for all of the crystals that she had broken doing just that. She glanced at the small pile on the desk in front of her. It really surprised her the first time one broke, as the metal cap popped off and flew across the room with a loud bang. Cladion wasn't happy, but he gave her another one and told her to be careful. She really was trying to, but it kept happening anyway!

“Ok,” Cladion said after nearly two hours of doing this, and a few dozen cycles of filling up and draining a crystal without it breaking, “I think you're getting the hang of this.” He pulled out two boxes, putting them on either side of the desk. “For the last hour, I want you to fill up these crystals. Put them in here,” he said as he pulled out a little crystal and put it into a little metal stand, demonstrating how she was supposed to do it, “And then put it in this box when you are done,” he gestured to the box on the other side of the desk. “Be careful and take it slowly, it's fine if you don't do the entire box. I'll watch you do the first two, and then I want you to try doing the rest on your own.”

Elwen filled up the crystal, slowing down as much as she could. She tried to make a game out of it, seeing how small of a stream of mana she could make. The crystal still filled up quickly, and Cladion nodded as she put it into the box. She took out another, and placed it on the stand, repeating the process.

“I'll take this one,” Cladion said as she finished, “Remember to be careful. I'll be back in an hour.”

Elwen nodded and handed him the crystal, before moving onto the next one. She knew that he said that she didn't have to get the entire box done, but there were at least forty crystals in the box, and she would have to step it up if she wanted to even get half of them done before he came back.

Cladion walked down the hall, returning from his lesson with the young mage. He was surprised when his boss asked him to teach her magic. Not so much that he asked him, he was undoubtedly the best mage at the fort, but more so that they even had someone for him to teach. Magic users were rare, although it was not uncommon for each city to have a couple. What he was baffled by was the fact that one ended up as a slave, surely the government would have done whatever was in their power to keep her there, even if she was only a budding mage. Mages were just that valuable.

It made more sense when he was told that she volunteered and was already 'bought' by someone. He figured that she was probably some poor orphan that agreed to become the slave of the state in order to secure her future. He could see how that could happen, but she must not have known how good her negotiation position was. It was a shame, but there was nothing that he could do about it, except his job.

He did, unexpectedly, enjoy being her teacher, even if they had just started and he hadn't taught her much. He never thought that he would pass as a teacher, but here he was. Maybe he should look into getting a position at the Academy? He would probably be able to continue his research there, although the money might not be as good... If this place had one thing going for it, it was definitely the money...

He arrived at his office and was greeted by his maid as he entered.

'Make that two things...'

His maid really was quite pretty, although maybe not as curvy as he would like. She was a 'gift' from his boss for a job well done with the surveillance grid, something that massively increased the security of the fort and the effectiveness of the guards. She was still technically company property, but she was exclusively and permanently assigned to him.

He arrived at his workbench and pulled out one of his magic tools. He needed to determine what the attributes of his new pupil's mana were. It was an important thing for a mage to know, as it essentially determined what kind of magic they could naturally do. A skilled mage could, of course, use double-transmutation to manipulate their mana into a different attribute and then cast a spell they didn't have an attribute for, but it was a difficult process and required a special magic focus. Hence why most mages couldn't actually do it. This was actually one of the reasons magic tools were becoming more and more popular, they allowed mages to do magic they ordinarily wouldn't be able to do. His attributes were primarily earth, but he had quite a bit of nature, and even had a small amount of fire mixed in, too. It was pretty typical combination of attributes, but what really mattered was what he was able to do with them.

He put the crystal his pupil filled into the tool, and let the tool begin draining it, slowly separating the mana into a few clusters around the disk, which would indicate the type of attributes it had. The tool wasn't able to detect all kinds of attributed mana, but it did have a spot where the types it couldn't bind would escape, with a special detector over the open that would indicate, generally, the amount of mana that escaped. It wasn't the most accurate tool, if he were to use it on himself he would probably only get earth attribute, with maybe a strange smear on the end where his nature mana gathered, but it would have to do. Besides, it was typically something that mages could figure out by themselves with enough experimenting. It was impossible to cast a [Ember] without fire-attributed mana, so if you couldn't cast [Ember], you probably didn't have a fire attribute.

It took the tool about twenty minutes to finish, another failing of the device that he wished he could fix, but unfortunately this type of tool was outside his realm of expertise. Now, if you needed to run thirty at a time from the same mana crystal, then he might be able to help.

He grabbed the disk, pulling it out of tool, and placed it into another tool, one that would let him actually read the disk. It basically sent light mana through the disk, which would be stopped by any other mana on the disk, causing the disk to glow in those spots. Generally, the brighter and larger the light spot, the stronger the attribute was. Of course, this somewhat depended on the source of the mana sample. He remembered one time that he hooked up one of his magic devices to it to diagnose an output problem, and the disk practically glowed like the sun. It was his fault for using one of his greater crystals to power it, he wasn't sure if it was just a bad crystal. He didn't make that mistake again.

His jaw dropped when the entire disk dimly glowed once he turned on the tool.

“What the fuck is this?!” She had every attribute?! That was impossible! The Archmage of the Academy himself, one of the most talented mages in existence, only had five strong attributes! Even a dragon wouldn't have this many!

'No, no, slow down.' He was right, it was impossible. Which meant that she didn't have every attribute. She couldn't have every attribute. Her mana would literally tear her apart. There must have been something wrong with the test. Did the first tool work? Did he put in the right crystal? Was the disk broken?

When he inspected the disk, he found something that surprised him. At the center of the disk, where the crystal interfaced with the disk, they pathways to the rest of the disk were glowing. They weren't supposed to glow. They shouldn't glow. They were made of pure arcane dust, a substance that was highly mana-conductive, but had almost no attraction. The whole point of using it was to allow the mana to flow to the disk without any resistance! The only thing that could possibly gather on it was...

“Pure mana.” She had pure mana.